Howard Linskey: The Dead

‘Send a car,’ Carlton told the Detective Sergeant, ‘tell him to pick me up outside the railway station.’

Fraser had been right to call him first. While the brass were sipping their Cognacs and singing ‘God Save the Queen’ before the charity auction, Carlton would get down there and stake a claim on the case. In his experience, pretty young girls being murdered attracted more column inches in the local papers and national tabloids than just about any other case. The middle-aged or elderly could be shot, stabbed, strangled, gassed, electrocuted or run over by trains and their story would be buried in the middle of the paper, but a pretty little thing with potential was a different matter altogether. If she was educated, wanting to become a lawyer or a doctor, or just about to go off and travel the world, then her death would be seen as even more tragic and the public couldn’t get enough of it. This could be front page news, only relegated further into the newspaper if the world’s economy was about to implode again or David Beckham had a new haircut.

Carlton retrieved his raincoat from the hat-check girl and fished out the packet of cigs for the short walk up to the old Victorian railway station. It was a mild autumn night and he kept his coat draped over his arm as he walked, lit a cigarette and drew on it. Carlton was used to seeing bodies, many of which were in an advanced state of decay; he’d become hardened to it over the years. The bloke walking his dog had probably never seen a body in his life, unless it was a relative in a funeral home all tidied up and made to look peaceful. Murdered folk rarely looked at peace and the poor bastard probably yacked his guts up on the spot, just like Carlton had done when he saw his first floater, almost thirty years ago now. He’d been a beat bobby back then, one of the first on the scene when they fished that murdered hooker out of the Tyne. She’d been in there a while, smelled like a wound that had gone septic and, just when he thought he’d managed to force his lunch back down into his belly, something dark and slimy slid from her eye socket and he’d barfed up all over the ground in front of everybody.

Carlton didn’t have to wait long before the unmarked car pulled over next to him and he took a last drag on the cigarette, dropped it onto the ground, stubbed it out with his foot and climbed in. DI Carlton was a busy man, with little time for reflection, but the short journey north allowed him to be alone with his thoughts for once. The driver, a DC in his forties, was an unambitious fella who would only speak when spoken to and Carlton was thankful he didn’t have to engage in small talk. His thoughts drifted back to the dinner that evening and what really stuck in his mind was the amount of moaning from his fellow officers; about the job, money, the whinging wife and ungrateful kids. By comparison he reckoned he was doing alright. Financially, he was through the worst of the early mortgage years. His oldest was out of university and had eased the strain on their finances a little. John might still need the occasional hand-out but that was nothing compared to funding a university education as far afield as Bristol. It was a shame about the girlfriend though. Helen had seemed like the one. At least John thought she was. They’d been together for three years, almost their entire time in college. She’d holidayed with the family and Carlton had started to view her as a future daughter-in-law. They were all shocked when she suddenly finished with him, with little in the way of an explanation. John was devastated and his dad didn’t know what to say to him. The poor lad was in bits but he would just have to get through it on his own somehow.

At least Gemma had chosen to stay in Newcastle for her degree. The girls she was sharing with seemed nice enough and there was no heavy boyfriend on the scene to take her mind off her studies. He had hoped she might just stay at home but Gemma wanted her own independence and you had to let them go eventually. There were times, he had to admit, when they quite liked having the house to themselves again.

Little more than a quarter of an hour into their journey, the driver took a left onto a dirt road that led to a couple of farmhouses, but the car came to a halt long before them, by a dip in the land. There was a clear sky and a bright full moon, but Carlton could make out little more than the tops of the trees from here. Fraser was waiting though, to take him down to the crime scene.

‘Hope it doesn’t ruin your shoes boss,’ he said, as Carlton exited the car.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ answered Carlton as he walked over the wet grass to the edge of the dip.

DI Carlton and DS Fraser paused at the top of the hill to survey the scene below them. SOCOs were moving purposefully, illuminated by lamps on tripod frames, which shone brightly down on the body of the young girl.

DS Fraser started to walk down the hill towards the scene but DI Carlton didn’t follow. Fraser turned back to see what was causing the delay and found his boss frozen to the spot, staring intently ahead.

‘What is it sir?’ asked Fraser. Then, when no answer was forthcoming, ‘sir?’ he asked again. Glancing back, he looked into the inspector’s eyes and was startled by what he saw there. Carlton wore a look of shocked incomprehension. The DI slowly opened his mouth then, abruptly, he let out a blood-curdling yell that made everyone at the scene start and immediately turn towards the sound.

‘Gemma!’ screamed Carlton, ‘Gemma! No!’ and to Fraser’s astonishment his boss charged past him and started running flat out down the hill towards the stricken girl. Fraser remained where he stood, as DI Carlton barrelled past a shell-shocked SOCO, then seemed to launch himself at the corpse, grabbing the body and pulling it towards him to enfold it in his arms. Fraser remained rooted to the spot while he watched panicked SOCOs attempting to pull the clearly insane Detective Inspector away from the murder victim, while he in turn clasped the dead girl to his chest with one beefy arm, fending them off with the other.

It took three of them to drag Carlton away from the girl and they all ended up in the water, tumbling as they lost their balance while trying to deal with Carlton’s bulk. Even from this distance Fraser could make out the crazed and desperate look in Carlton’s eyes as he climbed to his feet and ran from the shallow water, back to the body, leaving the three other men dripping in his wake. He grabbed the girl once more and clasped her to him. The tiny body lolled like a doll in his arms.

The three other men emerged from the water together.

‘Get away from me!’ ordered Carlton, all sense and reason gone from him now, as he pulled the girl’s flimsy corpse closer to him, ‘she’s my daughter, that’s my Gemma!’ and he began to weep, as he held the girl tighter still. The other men seemed to give up then. Perhaps they realised the crime scene was already hopelessly contaminated or maybe, like Fraser, they just couldn’t bear the sound of Detective Inspector Carlton sobbing like a child, as he rocked the lifeless body of his daughter in his arms.

There is really only one way out of this world for me. In a pine box. I wish I didn’t know that but I do. I’m not stupid. You can’t walk away from a life like mine. You don’t just retire and hand it all over to someone else or sell the business on as a going concern. There are too many people with a stake in the firm and if any of them ever believed I was looking to get out, they’d make sure I was retired permanently. You see, I can stay alive only as long as the people who work for me, and all the others I pay at the end of each and every month, reckon I am contributing. The minute I cease to add value to their lives they start questioning whether I am really anything more than a drain on their resources. There’s no sentiment in this business. As long as I am bringing in a lot more than I’m taking out, they are happy. If anyone starts to suspect I’ve gone flaky they will forget everything that has gone before and they will kill me. And I wouldn’t blame them either.